A Mathematical Model of the Cognitive Semantics of the English Preposition ON
Keywords:
construal, landmark, preposition, sense, trajectorAbstract
This study aims to present a mathematical linguistic analysis in establishing the relations between TRs, LMs, potential senses, and actual senses by using the case of the preposition on found in academic texts under the framework of Trajector (TR) and Landmark (LM) configurations. Data were corpora taken from 10 bachelor’s theses written by Indonesian students. To sort the data, Ant Conc 3.4.1.0 was used to parse clauses or sentences based on the TR-LM configurations. Based on the TR-LM configurations, a mathematical model was developed to discover how these variables are quantitatively related to the number of potential senses produced by using a geometric representation of TR and LM. This study indicates that the relation between TRs and LMs, on the one hand, and the sum of potential senses, on the other, follows the integral function of , which means that the total number of potential senses of Ps equals the integral of TR with respect to LM. Meanwhile, the total number of actual senses, ∑As can be obtained by the integral function of , which equals TR.LM + C where C is -Ls representing the constant of the number of lost senses. This mathematical modeling confirms that TR-LM configurations may be used to generate senses which prove the polysemous nature of prepositions.
Downloads
References
Anthony, L. (2015). Antconc 3.4.1.0. Open source concordance software downloaded from http://www.antlab.sci.waseda.ac.jp/antconc_index.html.
Bowerman, M. (1996). Learning how to structure space for language: A crosslinguistic perspective, in P. Bloom et al. (eds.) Language and space (pp. 385-436). Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
Chomsky, Noam. (1957). The minimalist program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Coventry, K. R. (1999). Function, geometry and spatial prepositions: Three experiments. Spatial Cognition and Computation, 1(2), 145–154.
Coventry, K. R., & Garrod, S. C. (2004). Saying, seeing and acting: The psychological semantics of spatial prepositions. Psychology Press. Retrieved from https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2004-14159-000
Coventry, K. R., & Olivier, P. (2002). Spatial language: Cognitive and computational perspectives. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Coventry, K. R., Carmichael, R., & Garrod, S. C. (1994). Spatial prepositions, object-specific function, and task requirements. Journal of Semantics, 11(4), 289–311.
Croft, W., & Cruse, D.A. (2004). Cognitive linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Evans, V. & Green, M. (2007). Cognitive linguistics: An introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Ferrando, I.N. (1998). A cognitive semantics analysis of the lexical units on, at and in in English (Unpublished Dissertation).
Universitat Jaume I, Valencia, Spain. Gȁrdenfors, P. (2015). The geometry of preposition meanings in the Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition Logic and Communication. Retrieved from https://researchgate.net/publication/286636906
Hornby, A. S. (2010). Oxford advanced learner’s dictionary of current English. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Huddleston, R. D., & Pullum, G. K. (2002). The Cambridge grammar of the English language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kamakura, Y. (2011). Collocation and preposition sense: A phraseological approach to the cognition of polysemy (Unpublished dissertation). The University of Birmingham. Retrieved from http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/1592/
Kornai, A. (2007). Mathematical linguistics. London: Springer.
Lakoff, G. (1987). Women, fire and dangerous things: What categories reveal about the mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Langacker, R. W. (1987). Foundations of cognitive grammar, vol. 1: Theoretical prerequisites. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Levinson, S. E. (2005). Mathematical models for speech technology. West Sussex: John Miley and Sons, Ltd.
O’Halloran, K.L. (2005). Mathematical discourse: language, symbolism, and visual images. New York: Continuum.
Ruhl, C. (1989). On monosemy: A study in linguistic semantics. Albany: State University of New York.
Sokolova, S. (2012). Asymetries in linguistic construal: Russian prefixes and the locative alternation (Unpublished Dissertation). The University of Tromso.
Song, X. (2013). A cognitive linguistic approach to teaching English prepositions (Unpublished dissertation). The University of Koblenz-Landau.
Tyler, A., & Evans, V. (2003). The semantics of English prepositions spatial scenes, embodied meaning, and cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2020 Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
